It has been over a decade since the first “purpose-built” e-mail archive solution came to market.  In that time, ESG has kept abreast of the challenges that drove creation of this particular market and the existing message management issues that drive its evolution.  This study is a continuation of a series of ongoing research projects that began in 2002—the point at which ESG believes e-mail archiving transitioned from a niche solution to a viable, standalone market offering.  The most recent study published at the end of 2007, E-mail Archiving Survey:  Business Priorities Drive Purpose-Built E-mail Archiving, highlighted the transition in e-mail management primary concerns from compliance to electronic discovery as well as initial interest in consolidated archives where file data was joined with e-mail for centralized management.  Over the past few years, electronic discovery has skyrocketed in importance.  Consequently, e-mail and file content is increasingly requested as part of legal regulatory matters, increasing demand for online archive solutions. In this report, ESG centered its analysis on three main areas.  First, standard baseline metrics such as the growth of e-mail, the use of quotas, and the impact of quotas on mailbox management and storage infrastructure were captured and analyzed.  Secondly, with so many changes in primary messaging environments (for example, the maturation of Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, e-mail offerings), the goal was to see how companies planned to deploy these solutions as they evaluated new messaging applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Corporate Gmail.   More specifically, ESG wanted to uncover the interest in adoption of SaaS-based message management solutions—and especially message archiving—as companies look to shift some of these tasks and the associated technology infrastructure to the cloud.  Third and finally, because the market is at a point where there are limited barriers to purpose-built e-mail archive adoption—there is plenty of competition, the technology is mature and proven, and the problems exist—ESG wanted to better understand the benefits existing e-mail archive users were realizing, how they were able to justify their investments, and what were some of the challenges they faced with their current implementations. In covering these focus areas, this report seeks to answer the following questions:

• To what extent have midmarket and enterprise-class organizations implemented—or are planning to implement—digital archiving processes and technologies for e-mail?
• What business and technology considerations are having the greatest impact on customers’ e-mail archiving strategies?
• At what rate is the use of e-mail archiving processes and technologies growing?  What are the key factors driving that growth?
• Which types of processes and tools (e.g., purpose-built, native, manual, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, etc.) are used most widely to support e-mail archiving requirements?  How will this mix of tools change over time?
• What are the most likely timelines and decision drivers for customers making new investments in purpose-built archiving solutions for e-mail?
• How have customers successfully demonstrated ROI (return on investment) and other business justifications for purpose-built e-mail archiving solution purchases?
• What are customers’ most common e-mail archiving challenges?
• What individuals and functional groups are most involved in setting e-mail archiving strategies and polices, and funding e-mail archiving solution purchases?
• Why do some organizations continue to forego any kind of formal e-mail retention and management policies or technologies?

The conclusions discussed here are drawn from data collected via a survey of 386 qualified IT and business professionals representing such functional roles as IT infrastructure, e-mail administration, records management, and regulatory compliance.  Note that for the purposes of this survey, “e-mail archiving” was defined as follows:

The long-term retention and management of e-mail messages (and associated data such as attachments) that have been purposefully retained to satisfy records management, data management, regulatory compliance, or litigation support requirements.

To qualify for this survey, respondents were required to be responsible for or familiar with their organization’s e-mail systems (i.e., e-mail application software, supporting hardware, etc.) and corporate e-mail policies and be responsible for or familiar with the processes and technologies their organization uses—or would use—to store e-mail information (including messages and attachments) for regulatory compliance, legal discovery, and general long-term retention and reference purposes. For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below. ESG Research Report E-Mail Archiving Market Trends Executive Summary